Six-time MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez has admitted that if he gets shoved out of the way in Sunday’s final race of the year at the Valencian Grand Prix by defending world champion Fabio Quartararo, he’ll understand the Yamaha rider’s motives.
Marquez will start the race at the Ricardo Tormo circuit only one row of the grid ahead of Quartararo, with the Spaniard’s Honda second (sandwiched by the Ducatis of Jorge Martin and Jack Miller) and with his French rival back in fourth – and while he’s expecting a messy and chaotic start to the race, Marquez also admitted that he won’t be angry if Quartararo gets a little bit too excited in the early laps.
With victory a must if Quartararo is to have any chance of overhauling Pecco Bagnaia and with Valencia not being a very overtaking-friendly circuit at all, it means that Quartararo’s only realistic strategy is some aggressive opening laps to the race – something he’s already alluded to being willing to do.
And should Marquez gets caught up in Quartararo’s aggression, he’s prepared to take it on the chin.
“I know that Fabio tomorrow will push a lot,” Marquez admitted in the post-qualifying press conference, “and he has to push. If he crashes and hits another rider – if he hits me – I will understand.
“I don’t want him to! But I will understand it, because he’s playing for a world championship, not for a race. I know that he’s smart, but he must do what he has to do.
“He’ll do the correct thing, to attack. Everyone will attack, and especially the Ducati riders will attack more because that’s the best way to help the leader that is Pecco. I want to do a good race as well, and for me it’s another race, but in the end the two guys are Pecco and Fabio, and everyone will pay attention to these two guys tomorrow.”
That expected aggressiveness from the defending champion doesn’t come without due reason, either, according to Marquez, who believes that Quartararo’s chances have been boosted by how his weekend has played out.
“If I’m in the position of Fabio,” Marquez explained, “then on Thursday I would have seen everything dark but now it would be more clear, shinier, because you don’t know. Pecco starts in eighth position, and in the middle [of the pack] you never know.
“He [Quartararo] started FP1 in a great way, full attack, and then he arrived to the limit of the bike. The others started to arrive step by step, and when Ducati riders arrive, they have something more.
“But it’s true that if I’m in Fabio’s position I’d say ‘eh, maybe.’ It’s very difficult, but ‘maybe’.
“If Pecco was starting on the front row, it would be really dark, but now he can have some options.”
